A wave of intense regret swept over me that I had not been at home at the time so that I, too, could have seen Wildacre. And I was also conscious of a pang that he had written to Blathwayte in his need and not to me. The thought of my own ineffectiveness stabbed me once again in the place where it had stabbed me so often that the wound never really healed. So I was a failure even in friendship, as in everything else! But all I said was, "Well?" Arthur went on in his plodding way: it was always impossible to hurry him: "I found him a good deal altered. In spite of your notion that genius never grows old, he looked a good ten years older than you do, Reggie." "I tell you I'm not old; only buried alive." But Arthur took no notice of my interruption. That is where he was always so restful to be with: he plodded along in his own way, utterly unconscious of any fret or worry or interruption. This was his custom in great things as well as in little ones. In my own mind I always applied to him the words of Bacon: he "rested on Providence, moved in Charity, and turned upon the poles of Truth." But I do not attempt to deny that both in moving and turning he never exceeded a speed limit of eight miles an hour. "Of course Wildacre was very ill, and that made him look still older; but one could see at a glance that he was a fellow who had gone the pace. His hair was quite grey, and his face deeply lined." "Yet he wasn't so much older than we are." It was always better to humour Arthur when he was telling a story. If one attempted to hustle him he stumbled and fell, and had to begin all over again. "But you look the youngest, Reggie. You are very young looking for your age. If you didn't wear a beard, I believe you'd still be taken for a mere boy." "You go on about Wildacre," I remonstrated, "and never mind my beard." I was not hustling, I was merely gently guiding. "Well, he told me that he had married nearly twenty years ago--an actress or a dancer or somebody of that kind, and that she died ten years later, leaving him with a twin son and daughter. His wife was an Australian, and he had lived out there ever since his marriage until he came home to die." "Was she beautiful?" But the moment I had asked it I felt it was a superfluous question. Of course she was, otherwise Wildacre would not have loved her: the more sterling qualities never appealed to him. The dramatic force of the whole situation seized upon me: the brilliant poet being bewitched by a beautiful dancer, and for her sake banishing himself to the Antipodes. There was an air of adventure about the whole thing that stirred my blood, it was so far removed from anything in my decorous and commonplace experience. Beautiful dancers do not grow in backwaters. "I haven't an idea," replied Arthur; "Wildacre didn't say anything about her looks, and it never occurred to me to ask him what she was like. Besides, it would have been an impertinence."